dirt and a clothesline

I'll tell ya what, Lily has been thoroughly enjoying the sunshine and being able to play outside.  Almost as soon as I go into her room to get her up from her naps, she is signing "cold" to me, letting me know she wants to go outside.  Yes, she got a little confused with the signing, but I know what she wants still.  Through the colder days-- I don't really feel I can be justified in using the word "winter"--, we would go outside and I would sign "cold," so she has now associated going outside with that.  We are working on the correct sign for "outside," and she can do it, she's just still a bit confused.  Getting her to come inside is like pulling teeth, and you can almost count on there being a tantrum.  Yesterday, I brought bubbles outside, and it was honestly one of the best times ever.  Zeke adores bubbles as much as she does, and between the fascination of watching me blow bubbles and wanting to learn to do it herself and watching the dog fly through the air trying to pop all of them, she was about in fits with giggles.  She wanted to hold the wand and blow the bubbles herself and would dip the wand into the bubble mixture and then either blow on it herself or run over to Zeke to have him try and take a turn blowing bubbles.  Z just licked the wand, so clearly he has a firm grasp on how to play, but Lily loved it.  I wish I had been able to either get a video or take pictures, but I didn't have any free hands [ok, and I left both my phone and camera inside..].

In the evening, after dinner, we went outside so Jesse could dig up one of the T posts for my clothes line.  The house came with two great, sturdy and very solid T posts, but they are ridiculously far apart.  I really do mean an absurd amount for a clothes line, especially since there are no supports in between.  I had requested that one of the posts be moved closer to the other one, and we moving one will provide more space for our gardens, so out Jesse went to dig a hole.  Poor guy worked for at least an hour, probably more on getting it out of the ground.  First of all, the previous owners really knew what they were doing and knew how heavy wet clothes can be when hung up to dry, so they had sunk the pole at least 2.5 feet into the ground with concrete.  Which doesn't sound like all that deep, but I would guess that the cement had a diameter of 10-12 inches..so I will let Joel do the math [but for the curious, the formula to find the volume of a cylinder is V = πr²h].  So after a good chunk of time digging and trying to find the bottom, combined with rocking the post and trying to loosen it out of the ground, he began to realize just how heavy this ridiculous thing was going to be for him to move by himself.  Normally I would at least try and help, but we both knew that I would a) be useless with Lily and a Bob belly and b) it really wouldn't be in Bob's or my best interest if I did try and help so I cheered him on and played protective wife, asking him every 3 minutes to not hurt himself.  Secondly, once he finally found the bottom of the concrete and post, he had to try and lift the dumb thing out of the hole.  As previously mentioned, it's ridiculously heavy.  He eventually was able to get enough leverage to lay it down out of the hole so I could stand on the T part and act as a pivot while he [carefully!] lifted the cement end out of the ground. We left it there for the evening.  But, as I am trying to document the changes we are making to the house to share with my friends and family, and Lily was being ridiculous, I went inside to grab my camera and try and take pictures of the process.

Jesse lovin' life

Lily LOVED playing in the dirt

ridiculous.  but I guess I will appreciate it as soon as I go to hang up my clothes..

The next picture kind of proves that Jesse and I are good for each other.  As we both sat looking at the hole, I was thinking how I wanted to see what Lily would do if I put her in the hole, but didn't want Jesse to judge me for suggesting it.  At which point, he looks at me and says, "do you kinda want to put Lily in the hole?"  Great [or weird] minds think alike.

"what is this..?"

"oh, dirt!  this stuff is fun!"

helping Daddy put the dirt back in the hole

Lily sat down on the filled in hole..at which point I said, "look, Jesse, we planted a Lily!" ...hah

I went grocery shopping after work, and have decided that when you're shopping solo with a small child-- and this may prove true for older kids, too, I just don't know yet-- you may reach a point where you have to mark where you are on the grocery list, go home and finish shopping another day and just not worry about the rest.  That was today for us, but Lily did decently well for how tired she was.  She just wanted to be held while I tried to walk through the store and push a shopping cart.  I was not amused, she's getting heavy!  Regardless, I'm going to have to go back to the store sometime, probably will hold off until next week though.  As I was putting groceries away, I decided that my belly is to the annoying size where it's getting uncomfortable to just bend down and pick something up off the floor.  So I just sat down with all the groceries scattered around me on the floor to sort and organize where things needed to go before putting them away.  I probably looked pretty special. 

I guess that's about it!